The invention relates to a new and improved construction of a mobile machine containing a power unit.
In a mobile processing machine such as known, for example, from U.S. Pat. No. 4,927,528, granted May 22, 1990, to the applicant of the instant application, the processing machine constitutes a rotatable sieve device for separating compost from comminuted waste material, which has been deposited in stacks or pits, after completion of a rotting process. The sieve device has associated therewith a number of conveyors for taking up and conveying the different materials resulting from the sieving operation. The sieve device as well as the conveyors associated therewith are mounted at a common support frame which also supports the power unit. The power unit includes a diesel engine as a prime mover drivingly connected to a sieve drum and a hydraulic system which drivingly acts upon the conveyors and other hydraulically operated parts of the sieve device.
The aforementioned power unit of the mobile waste processing machine has been recited merely as an example of widely used power units of such type. Multi-component power units of this kind are generally employed in various fields in connection with a variety of mobile machines which are operated, like the aforenoted material processing machine, in a basically comparable manner and comparable environmental conditions.
In many cases like in the aforementioned specific case, the power unit is placed on the support frame in a position in which the power unit as a whole or certain components thereof are accessible essentially only from one side. Also, parts of the machines driven by such power unit are covered or hidden by the power unit or certain components thereof and thus become inaccessible. However, in a great number of cases mobile machines of this type are utilized in places and environments which are way distant from a workshop or any other place permitting the power unit and/or machine parts hidden thereby to be readily accessed for maintenance and/or repair work.
Thus, with the presently known constructions of mobile machines, the severely restricted accessibility of either the power unit or certain components thereof and the machine parts hidden by the power unit or its components poses a serious problem if maintenance and/or repair operations become required.